Health Department 2015 Annual Report | Page 17

ADEQUATE AND DIVERSE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM WORKFORCE Goal: Attract and Retain a High Performing Public Health System Workforce D uring the current Strategic Plan, significant efforts have been made around our recruitment time to fill a position. When time to fill exceeds a manageable threshold, it puts additional pressure on employees and programs to make due with fewer resources. This added stress can impact a program’s ability to deliver their results and can increase employee relations issues in a stressful environment. A high time to fill can also have a reputation impact with candidates and set the wrong tone for the new hire experience. To improve the recruitment time to fill a position, the Health Department made process changes such as changing background check vendors, shifting reference checking to be primarily completed by email, standardizing its internal hiring process flow across all programs, doing more phone screens (as opposed to in-person interviews for the first round), and having intake meetings to start each recruiting event to ensure the hiring manager and recruitment team are on the same page. As a result, it has seen its average time to fill drop from 90 days in 2013 to 65 days in 2015. For the second half of 2015, it exceeded its target by achieving a time to fill of 56 days. Goal: Strengthen the Public Health System Workforce and Future Workforce Pipeline to Improve the Public’s Health A s a partner in the public health system, LCHD/CHC has made a commitment to not only grow awareness to public health careers for today’s needs, but also to be a leader in promoting public health careers and trends to students from elementary school through college. These events include participating in career days, visiting classrooms, talking to youth groups, and hosting “bring your child” to work day. In 2015, the LCHD/CHC Human Resources staff participated in eight promotional events, up from five in 2014. 17